Chess

There is no game of wits at which losing is more unpleasant than chess. Any game involving cards or dice involves chance. One can blame losses on the fickle Goddess Fortuna. Her constant presence teaches poker players, for example, a kind of stoic fatalism that enables them to cope with even the most unpleasant defeats.

Not so with chess. Everything is visible and therefore theoretically knowable. A loss is hard to view as anything other than a failure of one’s own judgment and intellect. It really hurts, and the higher up in the chess world, the greater the mental anguish. One reason why many strong players give up the game they love is that they increasingly find that the agony of losing so much outweighs the ecstasy of winning that they almost dread sitting down at the board to play.

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